


To Stay Alive

by scramblecat



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Gen, M/M, Our favorite two bickering old men, but it’s very reluctant, fluff!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23618191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scramblecat/pseuds/scramblecat
Summary: After a surprise blizzard hits the current battlefield that BLU and RED are stationed at, the two mercenaries who are the biggest enemies of both teams wind up stuck in the same room. Will they be able to put aside their hatred of each other long enough to survive the storm?(Rated T, because of minor swearing. Just in case)
Relationships: Sniper/Spy (Team Fortress 2)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 140





	To Stay Alive

**Author's Note:**

> This story that you’re about to read is a whole dump of firsts for me. It’s my first time writing Sniperspy, my first time using ao3, and my first longer story!  
> I rated it T, because I'm not sure how the rating system works yet :')  
> Enjoy!

The snow swirled around his face, blocking his vision to an extent. His aviators deflected most of the ice, but it still managed to get up behind his glasses and into his eyes.  
The snowstorm had hit without any prior warning from the Administrator, causing an emergency cease-fire and for all the mercs go scrambling for their respective bases.  
Before the Sniper had managed to get out of his nest, it was a complete whiteout. He couldn’t see more than four feet in front of him, and pellets of ice were hitting him from all angles.  
Shivering, he pulled his vest around himself tighter.  
_I should have stayed in that bloody tower when I had even the chance of surviving this._  
He put his hands out in front of him, looking for any sort of solid surface. God, he wished he had listened to Heavy’s warning today. The huge man had been right about the rolling clouds in the distance, about how the air smelled too cool and damp. He had predicted that it was going to snow today, and advised his teammates to stay close to base.  
But of _course_ Sniper _HAD_ to ignore that warning, of course he _HAD_ to pretend he knew anything about snowstorms while coming from the bloody land of _Australia._  
He had at least bothered to unroll the sleeves of his shirt to cover his arms. And his vest allowed for a little extra warmth.  
The sharpshooter tripped on an unseen rock, snapping him out of his thoughts and causing him to lose his balance. He tumbled forwards, his outstretched hands colliding with something solid. Concrete. It scraped his hands, but they were too numb for him to feel it at all.  
If luck was on his side, this was the BLU base, if not the RED.  
He began to slide his frozen hands over the surface, searching for a doorway or at least an indent to deflect the howling wind.  
Luck fell upon the Aussie soon after as he stumbled through an open space in the wall. Snow billowed into the room from behind him, but there was much less of it on account of the fact that he was out of the storm itself.  
The shivering man pulled off his glasses, cleaning the ice that had cling onto it.  
“Pleasure of you to join me-“ Sniper’s head shot up in surprise, and hope washed through him. There was somebody else here!  
“-Bushman.”  
All previous hope was immediately gone and thrown to the floor- then stomped on for good measure- as Sniper realized exactly who it was.  
_“You.”_  
The Australian’s voice was almost as icy as the weather outside. He took care to put his glasses back on before looking around the room for the other man.  
He quickly spotted him, huddling in a corner.  
Exactly the same man that had stabbed him in the back countless times in battle, the same man who’s kills were the quickest, but somehow hurt the most. The same man who’s knife was as sharp as his tongue, the same man who’s small jabs and insults always cut deep.  
Albeit looking _quite_ colder than the Sniper felt.  
The snake’s suit appeared to have actually frozen at some point, the silk was bunched up in spots and stuck in the air. His tie had come loose and blown to the side by the wind, and that, too, appeared to be frozen, shown by how lopsided it was.  
_At least he has that balaclava to keep his damned ugly face warm._ Sniper mused. However, none of these observations showed up on his face, he only scowled at his enemy.  
“Yes, me.” The Spy’s voice wavered a bit, as if his teeth were chattering from the sharp chill in the air and he was attempting not to show it.  
“Of all th’ people I had to get stuck in here, it _had_ to be wif’ _you._ ”  
“Yes, yes, I ‘ate you too.”  
Sniper would have snorted if he could still feel his nose, but he managed to roll his eyes, glaring.  
The BLU spy pulled his knees up close to himself, trying to conserve as much warmth as he could.  
Sniper settled himself down on the opposite side of the room, and they both glowered at each other in silence, two shivering men in a room slowly filling with snow.  
After a while, Spy spoke up.  
“The power is out.”  
“Yeah, so what? It ain’t gonna be night for another hour or two, mate. Ya scared of the dark?”  
“No, you _idiot,_ that means respawn is down.”  
There was a pause.  
“. . .oh.”  
Another long stretch of more silence.  
“We’re gonna die, aren’t we?”  
“Oui. Most likely.”  
The wind howled, and neither man said anything.  
“Unless, of course, we find a way to combine both of our body ‘eat together-“  
“Spook, I dunno what game y’er tryin’ to play, but I ain’t _cuddlin’_ with you, not even after I die an’ I’m in heaven or some shit. I’d rather sit here and freeze my arse off.”  
“It would not be _‘cuddling’,_ it is conserving the ‘eat that we _desperately need_ right now if we are to survive and not _die.”_  
He attempted to fish for his cigarette case, but gave up when he found that his fingers were too stiff and numb to grasp it.  
“But, since it is your decision, I guess we will sit here, slowly freezing, and eventually we will be rewarded with an end to our misery.”  
Silence fell on them again, and they were both left to their own thoughts.  
Sniper in particular was carefully weighing his options. On one hand, the bloody spook was easily the worst member of the BLU team. For all he cared, the man could go rot in hell.  
On the other hand, it was really cold, and he probably was going to go down with him if they didn’t carry it out.  
And nobody deserved to die this way, no matter how horrible they were. He looked up at the Spy, and noted how truly miserable he must be, just awaiting his death to the biting chill of the storm.  
A tiny, tiny flame inside of him lit, and while flickering, it was still there. And it compelled him to stand up from his spot.

The Spy was now violently shuddering as his body was trying to conserve the little heat that he had left in him.  
_Damn_ the thin silk suit, _damn_ this weather. _Damn_ the stubborn idiot sitting across the room from him.  
Of course, he was a Spy, he didn’t have much to live for anyways... but he wondered what it would be like to have a normal life, outside of sheltering with eight other idiot men and fighting nine of their copies every day.  
He sucked in a deep breath, and it chilled his lungs even further.  
Suddenly, there was a ‘whmmph’ from his left, and something warm was pressed against his side.  
He looked up in surprise to see the RED Sniper sitting next to him, leaning slightly into his small frame, reluctantly sharing warmth.  
“Didn’t want t’ die.” He mumbled, glaring a bit at the floor. “And I guess you don’t deserve to either.”

It was better than nothing.

“‘ow very considerate of you, jar-man.”  
There was a grumble along the lines of ‘don’t make me regret this’, but it sounded halfhearted and Spy doubted that he actually meant it.  
There was silence for a few more moments, just two men huddling in the corner of a snow-filled room.  
Sniper shifted, and flinched as his exposed hand brushed the Spy’s arm.  
“Bloody hell, you really are cold.”  
“Yes, we are in a room filled with snow that is completely exposed to a blizzard completely blocking the view of everything but snow outside, ‘ow did I not notice?”  
Sniper shot him a glare, and Spy managed a smirk.  
“If you really are oh-so-concerned about me, bushman, ‘ow about you ‘and over your vest?”  
“What? Why th’ hell would I do that?”  
“You want to be stuck ‘ere with me another moment? By all means, be my guest.”  
“I for sure don’t want to be trapped in here with your frozen ugly mug.”  
“Then ‘and over the vest.”  
Sniper huffed, and then rolled his eyes, shrugging the vest off his shoulders. “Yer’ gonna be stuck here with my corpse then.”  
It was Spy’s turn to roll his eyes, exaggerating the movement.  
“Let it cover us both, then.”  
Sniper didn’t make any retort at that, he just draped the vest over them both.  
“There. Now we both got somethin’ to keep the warmth in.”  
The vest was still warm from its time on Sniper’s torso, and Spy silently welcomed the warmth into his frozen body.  
Minutes ticked by, and Spy wished that his watch was still in working condition. It had somehow gotten waterlogged, most likely from the snow. Respawn usually fixed it, but since he hadn’t taken a trip through, it was still broken.  
However, he could see that the sky had begun to darken, and the snow showed no signs of letting up.  
“It is getting dark outside.” He commented.  
“It is? But cease-fire was called-“  
“Only about twenty minutes before the scheduled end of the match, yes. It’s too dangerous for a search party right now.”  
“So we’re stuck here?”  
“It appears so.”  
“’S gonna get colder when it gets dark.”  
“Yes.”  
“An’ we’re gonna have less of a chance of survival after that.”  
“Oui.”  
“Piss.”  
They were silent after that, and night began to fall.  
At a point, Spy scooted just a _little_ bit closer to Sniper. Somehow, the bushman has remained warmer than the Spy himself, as if he was a space heater that Engineer had whipped up.  
Spy graciously accepted the warmth, as it was pleasant underneath the vest, fighting away the biting cold.  
And, of course, it was keeping him alive.

At this point, the sky had darkened, and the snow showed no signs of letting up. The wind was still pounding chunks of ice against the building, blowing snowflakes through the door.  
“We should probably at least try to sleep. It would be better to get rest, y’know, now that we know we’re at least safe for now.”  
“Yes.” Oh, how he was going to miss his silk sheets. “‘owever, I cannot guarantee that I will not stab you as you sleep.”  
“Oh, shuddup, I know you will.”  
“Then you best get to sleep fast, it will make it quicker. Goodnight, filthy piss-man.”  
“Goodnight to you too, you damn bloody snake.”  
They shared their last insults and fell silent.

Sniper fell asleep surprisingly fast. Within minutes, Spy could hear his snores. Nothing he wasn’t used to, with his room positioned right next to Soldier’s, but it would definitely make it harder to sleep because of such close proximity.  
The chill of the increasingly colder night air was beginning to set in, and Spy was forced to sacrifice the majority of his dignity to press closer to Sniper. It was the only possible way he was going to stay alive through the night, after all.  
Minutes ticked by, and Spy found himself frequently shifting positions, keeping himself close to the space heater of a man next to him. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to fall asleep, on account of the cold, not being in the usual space he slept in, and the snores of the man right next to him. He was becoming frustrated, and he wrapped the edge of the vest tightly around his torso.  
All of a sudden, he felt Sniper shift, felt strong arms wrap around his small frame to pull him close.  
Spy did a double-take, checking multiple times to see if the man was awake or not.  
He wasn’t.  
Growling, he considered shoving the bushman away, after all, this was the man that had shot through his head, and ruined his suit daily by throwing jars of _piss_ at him. This was his enemy.  
But, on the other hand- this was the man currently using his own body heat just to keep Spy _alive,_ the man that currently had his arms wrapped around him and keeping him held close.  
The other hand won, by some inexplicable reason that Spy couldn’t put his finger on.  
He slowly wrapped his own arms around the Australian’s torso, pulling himself closer and leaning into his side, letting his head rest on the man’s shoulder.  
The last thought he had before drifting off to sleep, pleasantly warm and filled with comfort, consisted of only one word.  
_Merde._

When Spy finally awoke, the snow had stopped falling, and bright rays of sunlight filtered through the open door. He still felt the heavy weight of Sniper’s arms pulling him close, and he let his head rest on his shoulder again. He was slightly angry at himself because of the natural comfort that had settled in him while being held in the enemy’s arms. But at the same time, he savored that comfort, unconsciously knowing that he most likely was not going to feel it for a very long time.  
He glanced up at the bushman’s face, and was startled when he realized that the assassin’s eye’s were already open.  
“‘Morning, Spook.” The bushman said, as if he was greeting somebody on his _own team._  
Spy quickly snatched his arms back, and Sniper did the same.  
“Why did you not wake me up!?”  
The RED Sniper shrugged, somewhat awkwardly.  
“Y’looked comfortable?” He offered.  
“You _idiot,_ we are the Sniper and Spy of opposite teams, complete enemies, and you do not bother to wake me up to get out of this damned place because I looked-”  
“Found zhem!” A cheerful accented exclamation sounded from the door. Spy quickly stopped leaning on Sniper’s side, springing away from where he sat next to the man. Sniper did something similar, jumping to his feet and snatching his vest off the floor.  
The BLU Medic gave them a very quizzical look, raising one eyebrow and cocking his head slightly to the side.  
There was a very awkward silence, and Sniper and Spy exchanged a glance before facing the doctor.  
“To stay alive.” They agreed in unison.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a few people I’d like to thank for helping me make this story happen!  
> First, hyxcksun and alternitavely on Tumblr for pushing me to write it in the first place.  
> And second, Chaosandmayhem for both helping me when I was stuck and being one of the gods I look up to when thinking of writing about these two dumb idiots.  
> Thank y’all :’)


End file.
